This is the room where I work. It is a miserable squalid swamp of a room beneath the house of a happy family. I can hear them running above me. They never take their shoes off. It hurts my head so much. I hear them playing above me as I try to work. Always laughing and playing. Why don't they ever work?

There is a lot of mould here in this under-house. In summer it has a greenish tint. In winter it is dead black. Sometimes I see the faces of people in the mould. They are the faces of people I have known but I don't know where they are anymore. They are gone. The mould is the only place I get to see them now.

The mould is coming down from the ceiling and creeping up the walls. It smells like a damp forest in here. Insects gather in the old paint pots. There are lizards here too. The lizards are in the carpet. Skinks mostly, and a big blue tongue. The lizards like the carpet. They like the insects in the old paint pots too.

I like the all the animals and insects that come to visit me. There is only one creature that visits me that I don't like.

The cat.

The neighbour's cat urinates on my efforts.Currently the cat is my harshest and only critic.

The hole where I live and paint is covered with work no one but me ever gets to see.

There is too much, and I do not have enough wall space or enough floor space to hold it anymore.

Sometimes I wonder why I need to make things. There is no use for it. It serves no purpose. If I don't make things I get angry. If I don't make things I get upset.

All the drawings, books, pictures and ideas over the following pages come from these rooms.

They all live here with me under the noisy family. That noisy family makes my head ache: I paint them running around on the walls as rodents.

The noisy family above me are about to do renovations and my world is about to end.

YMP

Youngmasterpaul, The Inkling, No na mé Jones and the Nymbus Art Collective.